Generations of Geeks, A Reflection

I am a second-generation geek, raised on a steady diet of comic books, Dr. Who, and Star Trek.  While my parents were playing Zork, I was working my way through it's kid-friendly equivalent, The Never-ending Story, and still remember the hours I put into translating my east and west text commands into a workable map to reference as I moved further into the game. I was the only girl in the comic shop, starting with the Archie universe and graduating to superheroes with Perez's re-vamp of Wonder Woman.  I was an equal-opportunity fan-girl, obsessed with both Marvel and DC, and a collector's nightmare because I would read those books until they started to fall apart. I attended Dr. Who fan club meetings and Trek conventions before I even knew more about them than Daleks were evil and Wil Wheaton was dreamy.

These stories were my escape from an imperfect world and an imperfect childhood.  I would daydream about my X-gene activating (who am I kidding, I still daydream about that) and of being powerful, adventurous, unique, and proud.  They shaped my morals ("With great power comes great responsibility" ...thanks, my pretend grandpa Stan), my ambitions (I still fantasize about writing a treatise on the history and sociological evolution of comics and sci-fi), and, yes, my parenting (first evidenced years ago as I played Guild Wars with a sleeping, newborn J-Rex in my lap).

So, yes, I'm doing the same thing that was done to me:
I admit it. For the last seven and a half years, I have been indoctrinating the J-Rex with the philosophies of fictional heros and dreams of alternative universes where everything is far more interesting than it is in this one. I am lucky that, over my own lifetime, there has been an increase in awesome female characters to look up to and games for almost any playing style. I am also unlucky, though, in that games aren't as challenging as they used to be (RPGs with maps you don't have to make yourself and nice little arrows that'll lead you to your quests? pshaw!) and that, while strides have been made, Geekdom is still a boy's playground (don't even get me started on events like Hookers and Hackers).

...and, yes, like her mother before her, my J-Rex will experience geek culture in a slightly different way than those who have become geeks independently of parental influence: The children of geeks always have a choice to accept or reject a culture that was presented to them, rather than individually discovered.  They will have phases in their lives where they are "too cool" for their once-beloved figurines.  They won't necessarily care about the collector value of an object or the accuracy of a costume as much as they will care about the escapism and fun of it all. So, like her mom, at times the J-Rex may seem a "fake geek" because she won't remember the trivia from something she read in her early years or because she's always confusing universes (Marvel, DC, whatever...does that really matter as much as the things The Invisible Woman could do with her powers but doesn't?).  She will, however, always feel at home in the world of Geekdom (not to mention ending up with some great critical thinking skills and a penchant for dreaming, if nothing else).